so much unraveling

I’m glad to link up with Kat and Friends to see what everyone’s making and reading this week. Thanks for hosting, Kat! Here we go:

part i {the yarn}

Oh my God. The unraveling! It was a Ramen Party this week, friends.

No pictures. I was too hot and bothered.

Non-knitters: ‘undone’ knitting looks like a pile of kinky ramen noodles.

This lovely lightweight striped shawl is killing me. (It’s me. Not the yarn. Not the pattern. Not the needles. Me.) It couldn’t get any easier, a simple garter stitch with asymmetrically decreasing ends. Trouble is, I drop stitches all.the.time. I’m not sure why. Slippery, maybe? Softball? S0mething.

Regardless of why, I drop a stitch. And by the time I notice — down…down…down the ladder it goes.

Garter stitches are no fun to pick up. I get how it’s done. But making it happen…? I pine for stockinette.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The knitting class I really want is a Knit Doctor class. (More like Triage?!) A one-session class where you learn to fix your own mistakes. I’d be first to sign up.

So I ripped out and redid a few times this week. I nearly ripped the whole thing! (But I didn’t.) I’m back on the needles, and I do love this yarn…the colors…the fabric that’s working up. I know I’ll enjoy wearing it, homespun-y mistakes and all. Eventually.

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part ii {the yarns}

My reading this week was what I’d call thoughtful…thought provoking…and lighter. A nice combination.

I might be the last person I know to have read Lessons in Chemistry, by Bonnie Garmus. (A lag that’s often by design… When all I hear is yougottareadthis! and you’regonnaloveit!, that’s often my cue to wait. Not always — but often. So I can trust my own response.

I did love this one.

(If you haven’t read it, the summary’s here.)

I liked all the people I was supposed to like and eventually like…and, of course, I despised the wicked sleazeballs. Elizabeth Zott’s dog, Six-Thirty, was my favorite character. (And everyone else’s, too, I suspect!?)

The audio was well narrated, with a bonus was author interview at the end of the book. Bonnie Garmus wrote her bestselling debut at 62 (after being rejected by 98 literary agents); it was published when she was 64; she’s now 67 and a second novel is well underway (yay). The era of her own coming of age, as well as her mother’s, in comparison, gives credence to this mid-20th century novel of a scientist fighting to do science.

For me, the book didn’t miss a beat. I felt engaged, connected, entertained, P.O.ed, and proud. If you read it, what’d you think? Have you watched the made-for-Apple TV version? (I don’t have Apple TV. But I’m not sure I’d watch, anyway.)

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And a perennial favorite…Anne Lamott’s twentieth book, Somehow: Thoughts on Love.

I’ve listened to enough Anne Lamott that even when I read a hard copy, she narrates the book in my head. (Best of both worlds.)

Somehow matches her previous non-fiction volumes about the delicacy and resiliency of her human be-ing, with her characteristic vulnerability, tenderness, faith, experience, and self-deprecating humor. (She had a line in Grace (Eventually) about her triceps that makes me laugh a little each time I glimpse mine when they’re, we’ll say, relaxed.)

Among other stories of friendship, rough relationships, community, and recovery, she shares a public mistake she made and the no-way-out-but-through of it. (You might wince.) We also get glimpses of Neal (m. 2019). For longtime readers, it’s pretty neat to hear from her within the context of her companionable marriage.

Another thing about Somehow? It’s dedicated to the author’s teenage grandson. Lots of this book is stuff she wants to be sure to tell him. Things she wants him to know when she’s not here to tell him herself, which I don’t even want to think about. But listen to her and what she says about aging at the end of this 7-minute clip, recorded the day before her 70th birthday:

It’s a lucky world that has Anne Lamott in it.

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What are you making this week, making of any kind? Food? Music? Decisions? Plans?